Literacy Center Opens Amid Pageantry

Kaitlyn Williams, from the ripe age of 5, has made it her goal to become Miss America.

The Gurnee 2nd grader receives the Miss America pageant program in the mail every year. She studies the contestants' photographs during the televised show, searching for a winner.

So Sunday, when the real deal came to the town next door--to the Lakehurst Shopping Center in Waukegan--Kaitlyn scoped out a seat in the front row, pageant program in hand.

Today a worldy 7 1/2, Kaitlyn wore the sash and tiara of Little Miss Gurnee. "I want to travel around the world, have fun and wear a big crown."

Well. Don't we all.

Tara Holland, Miss America 1997, was visiting the mall to help open a new adult literacy center and promote her national platform on literacy.

Miss America has always had her supporters, as well as critics who detest the contest's beauty requirements.

But Sunday, Holland, in a conservative navy blue dress suit--sorry, kids, no sash and crown--was all business, promoting a subject event organizers say many are too ashamed to address.

"I became involved because I saw a need," said Holland, 24, a tutor and second-year graduate student at University of Missouri at Kansas City.

"I knew a person when I was 15 or 16 who never could find her glasses (and) never used a recipe to cook," she said. "After I did a little investigation, I realized this person could not read."

Holland and an entourage of fans, photographers and a security guard later toured Lakehurst's new Adult Learning Center, a drop-in facility that opens Monday. Computer use, tutoring and training for non-English speaking residents are among the free services that will be offered at the center.

The Waukegan Public Library, College of Lake County and Literacy Volunteers of Lake County opened the center with the help of a $204,735 grant from the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Fund.

An estimated one in five American adults does not know how to read or write, Holland said.

Miss America, organizers said, serves as an impressive lure to the young and old in promoting the subject. The literacy center is believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, because of its access to the Internet and its flexible, drop-in hours.

Little Miss Waukegan Ashley Wilson, 9, a 3rd grader at Andrew Cook Magnet School, was there listening, in peach taffeta and flanked by her mother and two brothers.

So were at least 100 other people who sat in front of Holland's stage, hung over the edges of the mall's upper-floor balcony or waited in line later for pictures.

Holland patiently signed autographs on books and a Barbie Doll box and even wrote "God Bless" on a Harley Hog figurine's bare chest for one 10-year-old boy.

The boy's father, Marc Daniels of Waukegan, who brought the Statue of Liberty Barbie for Holland to sign for his 2-year-old daughter, said he's an electrician who will face some kidding at work Monday.